The 101st Use for the Internet

As annoying as I find the Blue Mountain cards you get for every little occasion, I was actually charmed (at least temporarily) by the new (to me) animated cards that you get to put your face on the card and they animate. Even more so when I found out that you can put not only your face on there, but the face of your loved ones. To top it off you can pick the worst photos of your loved ones that they have ever taken and put them in there without their consent (and then post it on the internet). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Highway Yangshuo

After driving back and forth to the different climbing areas for the past 3 weeks I have developed a pretty good understanding of the workings of the highways in rural China. I've been either taking mini-buses, riding bikes or taking motorcycle taxis up to an hour out of Yangshau.

In the states traffic has such hard a fast rules. Each driver has their own lane; bikers have their own lane; pedestrians even have a lane to call their own (sidewalk). If you veer outside of your lane there are immediate consequences: you're either going to get a ticket, hit somebody, or at the very least piss somebody off.



In China there still seems to be the three lane system (lets say six to cover an entire road- and to be entirely clear here, I mean: 1) shoulder- 2) biker lane- 3) driving lane - 4) driving lane - 5) bikers lane and 6) shoulder). However in the Chinese system any one vehicle seems to feel entitled to use up to four of these lanes on a need based basis. To explain this point, lets say you have some one walking in lane 1, motorcycle in 2, car in 3, and an oncoming motorcycle in 4- and a giant (and I mean enormous) truck behind the car decides he needs to be in front. Also let me make a point here that faster traffic always thinks it needs to be in front. There is no getting stuck, there is just pushing ahead until you more or less force the other vehicles out of the way. The standard procedure is for the truck to hold on his horn and partially swerve out into oncoming traffic. This has the effect of getting the car to push over the motorcycle who pushes over the pedestrian and forces the oncoming motorcycle to go over to the shoulder. There are no yellow lines here. Usually accidents wil happen when 5 of the lanes are already full and someone goes for a pass. Here is some hair-raising video of what it is like driving in Yangshuo.

The O.C. Disorder

If you've known me for little over 10 minutes, it's probably pretty easy to pick up that I'm about as OCD as you can get without requiring medication. Actually, maybe I do require medication, but I've never been diagnosed. I think when I decided to eat vegetable stew for 3 meals a day / 7 days a week for 3 years of my twenties, I became resigned to the idea that obsession would have more pull over my life than common sense. When I went out to set the world distance record for handbiking (non-amputee division), that theory would be solidified all the more. So it should come as no surprise that given enough free time, good weather, and lack of distractions, climbing would overtake my life. Oddly enough, I don't even come close to having enough talent to set any climbing records; in fact I feel like I'm barely grazing the edge of climbing mediocrity.

When I came to China last year with my friends Marshall and Josh, it was a much more balanced trip of climbing and discovering the culture. We visited local hot spots, went out hiking, tourist caves, meat-dog farms and the like. This year I'm pretty much climbing every day. You're supposed to climb 2 days on, 1 day off; however if you don't care how poorly you're climbing or how mangled your fingers get, you really don't have to stop. Climbing every day will decrease your performance and in turn make you an overall worse climber. And thus the constant struggle I seem to face with athletics and OCD. I guess it comes down to what your goals are; climbing well or keeping a smile on your face by just being out there. Here is a video of one of the projects I worked on while in Yangshuo.

Limmony Snickets and a Very Unfortunate Series of Events

I'm surprised I've never heard the phrase 'back-shadowing'. Back-shadowing would be a sweet sister word to forshadowing. It would mean when an event happens and you can trace the origins of that event back to 3 or 4 other obvious events that should have foreshadowed that something big was going to happen, but you didn't pay attention. That was a pretty sloppy description, so let me just get right to the story to explain.


The final product was the following situation:

1. Stranded in a Chinese Airport with a canceled flight due to the protests in Bangkok


2. Stranded by myself with no friends in sight


3. No credit cards or ATM cards


4. Less than $10 on my person (not enough for cab fare to Yangshau, 1.5 hours away)


5. No one that spoke English to help me


6. I didn't have any phone numbers to call someone for help

These are the moments in traveling where you really have to buck up, or at the very least wait it out. I guess you could cry yourself to sleep in a corner and someone would come and help you eventually. Before I get to how I got out of it though, here the the moments of back-shadowing that led up to this.

1. Stranded from protests: We have been discussing at length over the last few months the deteriorating political climate in Thailand. After rioting and coups and re-re-elections, this was bound to happen.


2. Stranded by myself: I came over travelling with 3 friends. They all wanted to go back on the 22nd. That wasn't enough climbing for me, I had to stay 4 more days til the 26th. The 26th happens to be the day that the airports in Bangkok shutdown. My friends got home just fine on the 22nd.



3. No credit cards/ATM cards: So a week before I came to China I had my wallet stolen in Thailand. Right out of the glove compartment of my friends car while we were climbing. They got all my cards, driver's liscense, video rental card, subway punch card, etc.



4. No money: So after my credit cards and ATMs were stolen, I figured I would just travel with cash. Except for the exchange rate between Thai Baht and Chinese Yuan buys and sells at about a 28% loss to me. So I decided to just have my friend that I was traveling with use his ATM and then I would repay him when I got back to Thailand. The $10 I had left when i got to the airport would have been perfect had I not been stranded


5. No way to communicate: I clearly remember standing in a book store in Yangshuo that morning and picking up a Mandarin phrase book and thinking, "I'm not going to need this now, maybe next time."


6. No phone numbers- I should know better by now. Always have atleast 1 business card of a hotel or a business or something. I had all the contact info for the place I was staying on my mobile phone. Unfortunately, that got stolen with my wallet.

So I'm sitting outside of the airport trying to figure out what I'm possible going to do. The airport in Guillin is about the size of the Jackson airport and probably just about as far from town. Then a couple of Chinese people walked past me and for I could understand what they were saying, because it turns out that they were speaking (and were) Thai. Turns out that they were on the same canceled flight. Neither of them spoke English, but they could speak fluent Chinese. So we went back inside, talked to the ticket counter, they pulled up the website for China Climb (my friends in Yangshao), got their phone number, called them, China Climb sent out a taxi, and the rest is history. They helped me with all the money stuff until I could get some money wired from Thailand.

I'm stuck in China now until I can fly back, but there are much worse places to be stuck in the world. I had a feeling I was tempting fate with the Limmony Snickets haircut; it was really only a matter of time.

Visiting Old Friends

Food is often one of the defining factors of a great vacation. I remember 5 years ago I got this mini-sized hamburger in Washington Square Park at the Shake Shack in N.Y.C. It was soooo good, that to this day, that stands as my number one reason to get back to to N.Y.- to eat another one of those burgers. (My good friends Chris and Josh come in at a close second.) I had a similar love affair with some noodles and Seschwan beef last year in Yangshuo, China. So when I found out that one of my compadres at the climbing shop was going to be interning in Yangshao (at chinaclimb), I couldn't think of a better opportunity to reunite with an old friend (the noodles). So I'm here for a few weeks climbing, eating noodles, and blogging. Pui had to stay behind because she is saving her vacation time to come back to the states next summer. However Pui's boss, Josh Morris and girlfriend, Kat and Kat's brother, Dtaw are all here with me. One of my goals for this trip is to get some sweet climbing photos with the hair, so stay posted!

Revisiting My Least Favorite Holiday

I feel like every year I write something new about how much I hate the giant Thai Festival, Loy Gratong. This year was an exercise in facing this holiday head on. Putting all my fears about losing fingers, eyes and sanity to this fireworks infested holiday into a gratong and sailing it down the river. I stood at the banks of the river that drove me to madness last year for up to half an hour. Bottle rockets soared over my head, M-80s exploded everywhere. Police were arresting people left and right for setting off fireworks that were considered big enough to actually kill people. We had one of these go off 30 feet in front of us and you could literally feel a giant shockwave push you back. If you give it about 10 minutes, you actually stop panicing and start relaxing. I mean it's all way too much to worry about. Then I finally saw what maybe I was missing after all these years, all the activity, all the movement, the shouting, the life and excitment going on in every direction as far as the eye could see and no one was worrying about what might happen, they were just living in the now. (**this includes all the people that just lost their pinky finger to an M-80).

Oh... And I also went to the lantern lighting festival that I went to the first year. Here is another fantastic video.

Look at the Cute Little Puppies!

Wait a second? How did a dog crawl into the kitchen cupboard where all of my beloved Cliff Bars are stored, rip them open, and then have a litter of puppies in there? Wait a second! Those aren't puppies! Those are baby rats!! Some fat, slutty, pregnant rat was squatting over my Cliff Bars and pushing out these little pieces of disgustingness. These are the same Cliff Bars that I bring over from the states every year (50 lbs. in a suitcase of their own). The same Cliff Bars that Pui once quoted me as saying that 'I think I might love Cliff Bars more than her'. The only thing that might be worse is if those baby rats were conceived in my Cliff Bar drawer.

Anyways, after puking my guts out at the sight of these things, Pui and I went through and cleaned off every single one. We found 7 of the creatures in total. One of the most satisfying things I have ever witnessed was tossing them into the canal behind my house and watching an enormous fish coming up and eating one of them whole! Let that be a lesson to all would be rat mothers that plan on desecrating my Cliff Bars with their fetid offspring.

Our First Houseguest

After you've finally got everything unpacked- the office is all setup, dishes are in the cupboards, toothbrushes are in a little jar next to the sink, the utility room has all the boxes of extra stuff packed away that you won't see until the next move; you get that first night that you can just hang out and relax. We ended up spending that night reading. The interior of the new place is so relaxing and nice. It's very western in style and if I had one adjective for it, I would say it was 'clean'. So it was such a peculiar moment in my life when I looked up over the rim of my book and made eye contact with a 12" rat that just sauntered into the bedroom. Moments later, it reversed itself as Pui started squealing. So now I'm in the position of having to deal with a rat problem. I hate new houses.

So I go to the super store and go to the rodent ailse. For some god awful Buddhist reason there are no hinge-swinging rat traps. All they have is these 14" pizza plates with this special rat glue. You basically put some bait in the center, the rat goes for it and wallaa, you've caught yourself a rat.

What the box doesn't tell you (but of course you know it's going to happen), you don't just catch yourself a rat, you catch yourself a live rat. So now I have to figure out how to kill this huge thing. Pui (being the sweet little Buddhist that she is) wanted me to try and get the thing out of the trap (outside of course) and see if it could get away. After just about putting a broom handle through his stomach, I was able to dislodge him; only to have him get helplessly stuck to the broom. There was no way this thing would ever walk again. So I'm like, o.k., I'll put the end of the broom under the water in the canal behind our house, come back five minutes later and deal with it. Only the thing that happened was that 5 minutes later that little bastard somehow crawled up the broom handle 2 feet to get it's nose about 1" out of the water. At this point we figured this thing could probably survive anything, so I kindly scraped him off the broom onto my neighbors fence and waved a unfond farewell. That would suck so bad if my neighbors read this.

One More Time

Back in my college days it seemed like I was moving around all the time. An average year would start with me living in one apartment, moving home for the summer and then going back and finding another apartment in the fall. After I became a homeowner, I was kind of hoping these days of moving were behind me. So I find it a little exasperating that I've ended up in occupying 5 different residences in 2008. Pui and I just lost the sublease on the 'greatest place ever' and had to start apartment hunting. It's also funny that every time I move, I end up going through all the crap I own and getting rid of about 1/2 of it. Which means by now, I should only have about 10% of my original belongings. For some reason though it keeps getting worse instead of better.


So the new place is much nicer than the last one, 3 bedrooms, washer/dryer, entertainment room, patio, a stream in the back yard. I haven't shot a video of it yet, but I will soon. Until then, here is a photo album. It's got some really weird extra stuff. Imagine if you had money to do any crazy thing you wanted to do to pimp out your house - this is that place. A good example is my office. It has this 200lb. pocket door that when you slide it closed, 16 black fluorescent lights that are mounted in the floor come on automatically. You can also toggle it so the lights come on when it's open and off when it's closed. Who would ever do such a crazy ass thing? Every room is wired for surround sound through a central amp. These are the kinds of superfluous amenities that I'm trying to escape in America. It's so ironic that I ended up in a place that has them.

Anyways, the place is pretty sweet, the location isn't quite as good. We ended up buying a motorcycle for Pui so she could get back and forth to work. If the economy ever turns around in America, we might try to buy the last house we were in so I can cut my number of residences back down to two.

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

Thailand makes one thing very easy for me- being happy. I get to wake up every day and pretty much do whatever I want. I was just looking through photos from last year around this time and I'm doing pretty much the same things, taking Thai language classes and climbing (or ziplining as this photo would indicate) . As far as the Thai class, this class was the 4th level class so you would think that I would be getting pretty good. I would say I'm definitely getting better, but I've got so far to go. I love the reading and the writing so I keep focussing on that. There is nothing I love more than watching a really bad American movie and trying to see if I can read the subtitles in Thai at the bottom. I'm at about 30-40% right now, but that is much better than my 20% from last year. As far as speaking, that hasn't improved much, but my listening is good enough that Thai people can't gossip about my hair without me knowing about it.

As far as the climbing, I'm trying to go about 5 days a week. I've had some far off goal of climbing 5.12 ever since I was probably 15, and I think this is going to be the year. I'm getting cut up, freaked out, and exhausted every time I go out, but I keep asking for more. Pui has also been out climbing a lot more. She red pointed a 5.10b a few weeks back that has been her nemisis for the last two years.

Freezing in Thailand

It's easy to think of activities that you shouldn't participate in during certain seasons. Swimming in the Snake in November, skiing the slushy Tetons in July, mountain biking Ditch Creek in the mud season. Just because you can do those things, doesn't mean you necessarily should. And so it would go for Pui and I on our decision to drive up to the highest mountain in Thailand (8,414 ft) in the rainy season on a motorcycle. From minute number one to hour number 8 the rain would fall. First as a drizzle in pea soup like fog then eventually to a full on down pour. I'm so glad I caught the experience of driving a motorcycle in the rainy season on video to remind me never to get more than 30 minutes from home during that time of year.

In addition to the rain, it was about 40 degrees up there with 40 mile an hour winds. After about the fourth hour of that I felt like Lloyd and Harry in Dumb & Dumber when they decide to ride their moped to Aspen in the winter.

Harry: "I think I've got to go to the bathroom"

Lloyd: "Just go man"


Harry: "....."

Lloyd: "That feels nice"

The Lawsuits We Would Have

Now and again I'll see things that are so incredibly negligent. Today I was driving the motorcycle on one of the major highways - 6 lanes. Up ahead there was a road crew putting in a telephone pole. Instead of blocking off a couple of lanes to do the work (like they might do for a wedding), they suspended the concrete telephone pole right across all three lanes of the side they were working on. The crane holding the pole up was using some kind of hemp looking rope that didn't look like it could support a kite, let alone a 2 ton concrete structure; the workers looked like got a job from the temp agency that morning. So anyways, usually in these situations you want to get through it as soon as possible; which in this case means hitting the accelerator and getting to the other side. Just as I started to drive under it, one of the workers dropped a bolt the size of a baby's arm about 2 feet off the left side of my bike. Driving at 50mph, this entry just about didn't make it into this blog.

Domestic Disturbance

As many of you know, there are few things that get under my skin as much as a spiders- particularly ones residing in my house. So it was to my particular chagrin when I came home to find a palm sized one hanging out next to our dish drainer. There are few times that I have a hard time living the Buddhist lifestyle as much as when I am forced to follow the rule "Thou Shalt Not Kill Spiders". Of course it would probably be easiest to just ignore that I ever saw the thing and move on. However, just the thought of that thing coming out from a dark corner when I least expect it, well, it's just too much.

So the next 1/2 hour would be spent trying to trap lightning in a bottle, without touching it of course. The whole thing got a lot more complicated when it escaped into the underside of the cupboard that holds all the coffee cups (it has a slotted bottom to allow them to dry). After covering up the slots with a cutting board, I went through the most terrifying task of lifting each coffee cup, one by one, bit by bit, hoping against hope that the giant spider wouldn't be faster at getting out of the cup, than I would be at slamming it back down.

Not even close. A scream, a dropped cutting board, a broken cup later- the spider dropped down into the sink. What was so interesting was that the little monster couldn't pull itself out. It looked exactly like the little spiders that you find in your bath tub. I was able to eventually put a plastic bucket over the top of him and ferry him over to my neighbors yard. I only captured a little of it on video, but I feel like it shows the drama of looking for the spider pretty well.

The Highway Wedding

Planning a wedding (I'm guessing) is all about compromises. Your family wants to invite 300 people, you can only afford 200. Your fiance wants filet mignon, you settle on chicken fingers. Reception on top of the gondola becomes a pot luck in your back yard.

Somehow Thai's are able to stretch a wedding budget in ways we would never conceive. Need a venue for 200 people? No money to rent a place? No room in the backyard (or no backyard)? Have it in the front yard. Only have a 6 lane divided highway in front of your house? Move the wedding tent into the first two lanes of the highway. Put some cones up and blast some music to cover up the sound of the traffic. Problem solved. Check out the venue: video here.

Like any good Thai wedding it did not fail to disappoint. The bride's family was so sweet to put eight of us up for two nights- room, board and some of the nicest company I've ever kept. Check out the updated photo gallery for some highlights- including the cockroach crawling up an unsuspecting wedding guests shoulder. Some day I might be nice enough to take the roach off before I photograph it. Today is not that day.

The Rainiest Season

So I showed up 2 weeks early to surprise Pui this year. I didn't have a specific plan, but I though I could wing it when I got here. Unfortunately, I totally botched the surprise this year by inadvertently calling her office's cell phone. After she saw the caller id, she knew I had slunk into town early. That being said, she was still surprised, just not a blog-worthy surprise.

This is my first time back in Thailand for the rainy season; and September is as rainy as it gets. The deluge that pours forth from the sky can turn into a sketchy flood pretty quick. Last week it went from dry streets to shin deep rainwater in about 20 minutes. It's a little disconcerting when you realize that some of that water is overflowing from the sewers.

If you're riding your motorcycle, you can either brave it out (and hope you don't get any splashes), or do what I'm becoming fond of. Pull the bike over to the closest Thai masseuse and go for the 3 hour massage.

Even though it can be hard to get out of the rain, I'm definitely making up for it by catching up on all of the craptastic reality tv I ever wanted to. Click here for the Paradise Hotel 2 homepage. Or don't.

Always Leave a Party Wanting

I had a really hard time trying to decide between titles for this entry. It was either going to be this title, or 'Best Summer Ever'. The title I chose is comes from one of my favorite quotes from Jeff Burke. The basic idea is that whenever you are really enjoying some thing, some place or some experience, it's a good time to leave. That way you'll always want to come back.


When I came back to Jackson this summer I was so not ready to leave Thailand. Life was good in the land of smiles and I didn't want to jump back into the fast pace that my U.S. lifestyle is. Oddly enough, 3 months later I'm not ready for that fast pace to stop. From snowboarding early season, going out with friends, hiking the classics, spending time with family, hitting the music festival weekly, to swing dancing at the cowboy and shutting down the bars every night, life was very full this summer. I have to give most of the credit to my partner in crime, Erin Roy, who was always up for a good time. Here is the video of us dancing at the Cowboy. Watching it definitely makes me nostalgic.

One of the tools that made this great summer possible was my new monster truck. Purchased for $5000, this 1995 Forerunner on a liftkit was nothing short of 'high school awesome'. At 13 miles to the gallon, standing 7'2" tall with the biggest subwoofer you've ever seen, listening to nothing for 3 months except for this hip hop group out of bozeman, EightTrack Mind; it provided me with hours and hours of entertainment.


Finally, my summer was spent growing out my ridiculous haircut. What started as some misguided attempt to be the first person to actually try to grow a comb-over, turned into a full on obsession. Now I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of bad high school teacher hair and full blown clown hair.

Homecoming

So I finally came back to Jackson. Flying into the airport gave me an odd sense that I was only visiting as a tourist. I've tried over the last few years to work out a system of 9 months over there and 3 here and I think I might finally be there. I was a little reticent to come back at first because the lifestyle is soooo different. Turns out though, that it is different good. First off the weather here is much easier to just exist in. The last few months in Thailand (before the rains) it was well over 100 degrees with all the humidity you could handle. Going to sleep at 10am and waking up at 4pm just to stay out of the hottest part of the day was starting to wear on me.

So the good news for my family and friends in Jackson is that I'll be here for the whole summer (winter if it keeps up). I probably won't be blogging that much (unless some really crazy stuff goes down), but looking forward to getting back to it in the fall. Stay cool this summer -josh

The Things That Go Bump

Ever since I moved to the giant house in the old city I've been cataloging the zoo that my house/front yard is. From gecko's to squirrels to bugs to you name it, we've got it. You can sit out on our front porch and just watch the nature come to you (or crawl on you, as the case may be). I updated the photo album with the highlights from the last 4 months. I also got a pretty sweet video of a gecko eating right outside my office window.

Any Given Sunday

So I got back from Japan about 2 weeks ago and I haven't had a thing to write about since. I got this great quote from a friend in China: "Visit someplace for a month, you can write a book, 6 months you can put out an essay, in a couple of years, you're lucky if you can squeak out a sentence." As it goes no matter where you live. The things that once were mind blowing have a way of becoming pedestrian. So I looked at some photos I've taken recently and tried to recreate the last 2 weeks.

• The Return of Song Krang. A week long water fight dressed up as the Thai New Year celebration. The old city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a 6km moat. About the most fun you can have is getting up around 9am and walking the perimeter with a bucket. For the next 8 hours you enter a shoulder to shoulder procession of the walkers vs. the drivers. Continually getting hosed down with ice water from the backs of trucks while in turn dumping on them the grossest, dirtiest water you've ever seen on them dredged out of the moat. I think maybe the most important thing is to make sure that you keep that moat water out of your beer. Video of the festivities.


• Zip-Lining throughout the forest. Usually reserved for moviestars and reality tv-show contestants, a zip-line company opened up in Chiang Mai about 6 months ago. Honestly it isn't half as exciting as it would appear on TV. I think the most exciting thing that happened was my shoe came off during one of the flights. Actually, here is a video of Pui. This is what happens when you don't carry enough speed to make it between platforms.


• Hiding in the masses. I really appreciate the anonymity that living in a large city affords you. I can now grow the mustache that humility would never afford me in Jackson. And really why stop there? I let my hair grow back for the first time in 4 years so I can shave my girlfriends name in the back, just like I always wanted.

The Things You Do for the Ones You Love

Whenever you travel somewhere with a camera, you usually have some idea of the photo that will capture the experience. For instance you've got your: DisneyLand/Mickey photo, Jackson Hole/Elk Antler Arches photo, Moon Landing/Earth in the background photo, etc. For Pui and Japan that photo meant getting dressed up in a traditional kimono and getting her picture taken (think the old west photos on the Town Square). The second day in country we drove 2 hours with Pui's aunt and uncle to visit Japan's answer to Universal Studios (not to be confused with the real Universal Studios which we visited on 3rd day). So anyways, we come across this place that does the full on geisha makeup and photo shoot. It was kind of pricey and the makeup took over an hour and we were with her aunt and uncle, so we talked ourselves into finding another place while we were on vacation and had a little more time. Which brings me to a very, very important travelling postulate that I've come up with:

While traveling: If you come accross anything that you really want to see, do, or buy, but at the time it seems inconvenient, pricey, (insert excuse here)- forget all those excuses, just see, do, or buy it RIGHT THEN. Because if you wait, there is a very good chance that later it will be much more inconvenient, much pricier, much more whatever at a later date.

After 2 more weeks in Japan we had yet to see another one of these photo places; and beleive me, we asked just about everyone we knew or didn't know. So we find ourselves with 2 more days in the country. I could write a 3 page story here of what I did to go through to get that photo, but here are the highlights:

Day 1 (Started at 8am):

• Made a reservation at a photo studio early in the day. (this was accomplished by drawing pictures for a travel agent and having her guess what we wanted)


• Travelled 2 hours via railways to Nagoya (tickets cost 2x what the original photo shoot cost)


• Spent a good amount of time trying to follow a map that I had taken a digital photo of to get around Nagoya.


• Finally make it to the photo place at 4pm. After 1/2 an hour of more picture drawing turns out they will only take a photo of you if you have your own kimono


• Rode the train all the way back home

Day 2 (Started at 7am):

• Freaked out that the only place in all of Japan to get this photo was in Kyoto (the first place we started)


• Turned down Pui's relatives offer to drive us there (2 hours), because damn it, I love an adventure and I know everything in the world about Japan's railways


• Got confused by the train system no less than 5 times resulting in missed trains or boarding the wrong trains (we would board no less than 12 trains in the 13 hours we would spend travelling that day)


• Got to the theme park exactly 1 hour before they closed (looking at your watch all day count down from 8am until 4pm, knowing that if you don't make it there by 3:30, you're screwed is about as nerve wracking as it gets)


• Tried everything under the sun to get the manager to allow us to get into makeup to take the picture. Even after Pui crying, me pleading and offering 5x the asking price, I was turned away.


• Was referred to the low rent place down the street with bad costumes and no makeup. I convinced Pui I could photoshop all the makeup in later.


• Looooong train ride back home.


• At the train station we boarded the bus to go 15 minutes to the house. Got on the wrong bus, which was also that last bus of the night and ended up parking the bus at the bus depot 1 hour out of town (we had to call the relatives to come pick us up)

And with no further ado, here is the photo in all its glory.

Also, this isn't actually part of this story, but it's worth mentioning that for our final flight leg from Bangkok to Chiang Mai we were held up in immigration so long we missed the flight and had to buy new tickets for a later one.

And lastly, just so you know I updated the photo album with the Japan Photos.

My #1 travel tip

I'm sure this has been posted somewhere, but I can't tell you how valuable a digital camera can be when you are in a foreign country with a language barrier. The basic idea is you snap a photo of anything that might need further explanation and then just look at the details on the view finder (zooming to any detail you want). Here are some original ways I was able to use it:

• Taking photos of train maps at the stations. While you are on the train you can look to see if you are going where you think you should be going.


• Taking photos of maps in the phone book (or anywhere you see a map that isn't a brochure). Show the map to people in the neigborhood and you get to the right place eventually.


• Map of a landmark that you need to get back to. I took a picture of my locker at the 2 sq. km tokyo train station with a recognizable koala statue in the photo. 4 hours later when I needed to find the locker, the staff knew where I should go.


• Photos of intersections that you walk through in any big city, then check them later when you're lost and you think you've been there.

The funniest momemt when I used this technique was when I was lost on a train with no station map. At every stop I would frantically run out (you've got about 20 seconds) look for a map, try to get an in focus picture, and then run back in right away.

NYC, Take 2

To my chagrin, I spent a good part of my 20's as a self-proclaimed metrosexual. At one point I actually had room in my life for leather pants and matching alligator shoes and belts. For about 6 years, I travelled to New York to soak in the city life and obsess about the culture of style that I wasn't getting in Jackson.

Then Thailand happened. Along the way I cut down my wardrobe to 2 shirts and 2 pairs of pants. If you look through my photo album for the last 3 years you'll notice in every photo I'm always wearing either a red shirt, a black fleece, an orange jacket or some hopelessly outworn Gap jeans (circa 2005). (*the jacket you see in the Japan photos is on loan from Pui's uncle) Other than the pain of having to do laundry a lot more often, I haven't missed having all those extra clothes one bit.

That is until I landed in Tokyo. I felt the exact same sort of insecurity as I felt walking down 5th Avenue in my Carhart jacket and Levis in the 90's. This city is every bit (if not more) style obsessed than New York. I commented to Pui on how much make up the women wear here and she pointed out that she has seen almost as many men wearing eyeliner. I would say 60-70 percent of the women in their 20's are wearing high heels and the other 30 percent are wearing knee high hooker boots.


What really reminds me of New York though is how you can blow your whole day doing nothing but people watching, riding subways and eating great food. The metro system (see map in previous post) is absolutely fantastic. The hairdo's alone are worth coming to Japan to see. As for as the culinary side, I'm blown away- the sushi is like butter, the noodles taste like they were made 10 minutes ago. Of course this is coming from someone that used to think that the best 'ramen' I would ever have came from those little dried noodle packages at the grocery store.

So anyways, the whole point of this rambling entry is that had I visited this place in my mid 20's, I have no doubt this is where I would have ended up. As far as big cities go, I think this one is about as good as it gets.

Hurricane Tokyo

When Pui and I booked the trip to go to Tokyo with the travel agent, we went ahead and threw in a day for Tokyo DisneyLand. Turns out the day we had booked coincided with the worst weather I've ever seen in Asia. The kind of wind that shreds your umbrella the second you open it, rain falling in reams, temperatures hovering around 40; it was pretty bleak. Neither of us were that excited until we saw what happens to DisneyLand when a hurricane blows through- the throngs of people disappear. The first 6 rides of the day we were the only two people on the entire ride.
I remember riding Space Mountain when I was a kid and waiting for 2 hours in line for a 2 minute ride. Usually you get so sick of waiting in lines, an average day to DisneyLand is probably 5-6 rides. Without the lines however, we rode a total of 25 rides in 6 hours. Really the only reason we stopped at that was because we both started to go hypothermic.

What I know of the People

About 3 years ago I used an 8 hour layover to hoof around some Japanese temples. I was absolutely shocked at how I was treated by the people. I was coming back from Thailand where if you open a map people will openly walk up to you and ask not only 'Where are you going?' but can they help take you there. In Japan when I opened a map and approached them they would literally drop their eyes and turn around and walk away. Store owners would retreat into their shops. Years later when recounting this story to a friend more adept with the culture he filled me in. It wasn't because they were rude at all, but because they were so afraid that either 1. Their English wouldn't be good enough to talk to me or 2. They wouldn't know where I wanted to go, that they were too ashamed to even enter into a map imposed conversation with me.

This trip has definitely confirmed that explanation. Pui has made some friends with a few Tokyo natives through the climbing shop. These are people that have come to Chiang Mai once or twice and said casually 'Look me up if you ever come to Japan.' So we did, and I can't tell you how impressed I am. We emailed a friend she had met twice previously to let him know we would be coming. Here is how welcoming this guy was:

• He owns his own company, but took off a Wednesday to drive 2 hours from North of Tokyo to spend the day with us.


• He picked us up at our hotel and transferred us to our new hotel (an hour by car)


• He paid for everything all day, including memberships to the climbing gym for both Pui and myself, entry fees into temples, and food at some pretty sweet restaurants.


• Laid out an itinerary for us for our remaining time in Tokyo

Remember I had never even met this guy before and Pui had less than an hour of face time with him. I don't think I would drive 4 hours round trip for a blood relative :) The other friend that she met through the rock shop was just as great. Whenever we had a cultural misunderstanding we could call him on the cell phone and hand it to the shopkeeper and he would straighten us/them out. He helped us around the metro tirelessly. I had never met him before either but he made me feel like family.

I guess the point is that if you don't personally know someone over here, they aren't going to give you a warm fuzzy. However if you've got an in, they are the friendliest people I have ever met.

Doesn't Play well with Others

Part of Japan's success as an economic super power is built on how proprietary it's infrastructure is. The rest of the world might be using Japan's technology, but as far as I can tell, they are only using their own. They have their own cellular phone system that only Japanese cells will work on (no iphones over here). All the ATM machines only work with ATMs issued from Japanese banks. You go into a 7-11 in Thailand and you see Lays, Evian, Halls, Oreos and a hundred other imported brands. In Japan, the 7-11 stores have weird dried fish snacks and 100's of other things that are put out by Japanese companies (which makes me think that 7-11 is probably owned by a Japanese company). Actually the only thing I've seen that is mass imported are cigarettes- the Marbolo Man is making a killing over here.

As a computer guy I now completely understand why this country is continually putting out technologies that only work with their own things. When 95% of the world was using Compact Flash cards in their digital cameras, Sony was putting out the Memory Stick that nobody could use.

Too much efficency?

I never realized how travel friendly Thailand is. Sometimes you have to be exposed to how bad it can get before you appreciate how good you have it. In Thailand you're never more than 3 people away from someone who knows English. In my first 10 days in Japan I don't know 3 people in the entire country yet that have more than a 10 word English vocabulary. Granted, I've spent the majority of my time off the beaten path. I can count on one hand how many white people I've seen in 10 days. Honestly it didn't even matter the first part of the trip because Pui's Aunt and Uncle were there for everything we needed.

So how hard could it possibly be to venture out on our own? We decided to head up to Tokyo to go climbing for 4 or 5 days. We went to the train station with her Aunt and Uncle who were kind enough to buy us train tickets. Simple enough - 2 train transfers, straight to our hotel. So we headed out about 4 hours ago and so far I couldn't be more frustrated.

We got on a train that was about 2 minutes early of a 9:43am departure. There are no English signs, so other than matching up the time and platform, you really have no way of knowing if it's the right train. We asked 2 people before we got on by showing them the tickets and they both nodded long before they even looked at the tickets. It can be terribly frustrating asking anything here because the culture is setup that by asking someone a question, they stand to lose face if they can't answer it. Unfortunately, more often than not the answer is a meaningless up and down nod.When we reached what I considered to be our first transfer (again, only by judging the time that we should disembark), we got off amidst 100's of Japanese signs (the English ones were just as helpful). After quadruple checking with 4 people, none of who spoke even a word of English, I ascertained we were at the wrong station.

So climbing back on another train (this time an express), we grew concerned after the train continued on for another hour (40 minutes past our missed connection). It is a really sinking feeling you get when you are on a train, no idea if you are headed in the right direction, no one to ask, basically just waiting to see where the thing goes. When we finally got off at the next station, we again quadruple checked with the question 'Nagoya? + a finger pointing at the ground'. So we were in the right place now, but had missed the connection by an hour.

So now we are stuck, they won't let us in the gate and we have to communicate the above story using sign language. Of course you can probably guess how this played out... $300 later we've got some brand new tickets.

When we got to Tokyo I recounted this story to a friend and he explained where we went wrong. We got on that first train 2 minutes early. If we would have waited 120 more seconds, the correct train (the express) would have come along. Japanese efficiency. God Bless it.

The Little Things

This entry isn't about any one thing in particular. Just some of the weird stuff you come across.

• For my birthday, Pui and I (and her aunt and uncle) went to the Universal Theme Park in Osaka. Here is a video of Bert and Ernie 'Putting on the Ritz'. All the theme rides were dubbed in Japanese as well. I had a pretty craptastic burger at a Hollywood themed restaurant for $26. (this on top of the $100/person entrance fee). All that being said, it was pretty sweet. Pui got her picture taken with Popeye and I got the crap scarred out of me at Jurassic Park. What more could you ask for your 35th.



• At the lower end of the Sushi spectrum, it is very much the fast food of Japan. They have these restaurants everywhere that have a conveyor belt that is constantly running with Sushi. You don't actually order (although you can), you just wait until something comes along you like and you pick it off. For the tally, they just count up your plates. Pui and I can eat until I never want to see sushi again for about $15. Video here.



• The Japanese have got parking down to a science. I just wrote about a paragraph trying to describe it, but it's too hard to accurately tell you how cool it is. Easier to just check out the video here.



• This whole blog entry is probably just an excuse for me to talk more about Japanese toilets. How we haven't adopted these in the states yet I have no idea. First of all the seats are heated - and you control the temperature with a very sophisticated wall mounted control panel. When you are done going to the bathroom you press another button that pops out a lever that will shoot a warm jet of water so you pretty much don't have to do any wiping. In addition, you can control the jet of water ad infinitum: temperature, angle (both up or down and left or right), amount of water, pulse or constant flow, timer or manual shut down. There is a button on the wall to flush and when you hit it a compartment on the toilet rolls back revealing running water so you can wash your hands.



• Climbing Gyms: If you're not a climber, you can skip this one. We've been to 3 different gyms in Tokyo and everyone has the same weirdness. For starters, the holds on all of the sport routes have been painted. Normally gym's use tape to signify a route, here all the holds are just painted the same color. The result is that they are as smooth as glass, no friction. We asked our friend why in the hell they would do that and he said that there is a mentality that if you can climb on a 5.10 without friction, you can climb just about any 5.10 in the world. That to me is like forcing everyone in the gym to wear 10lb. ankle weights. The other weird/cool thing is that all of the bouldering problems are any feet. With the zillions of holds on the wall you would think that everything would be pretty doable. Not even close. I've never had my ass kicked so bad in a bouldering gym (and had so much fun at the same time).